Cultural Notes
Disclaimer
The cultural notes are not academic papers and do not include academic sources, so don’t hold them to these standards and for god’s sake don’t quote them. Instead they consist of pronunciation help for the characters’ names and other language matters, as well as insights into my costume and related design inspirations. The goal is to give an overview of what is fantasy and what is actually taken directly from real life cultures – I think this knowledge is important for everyone to have and I don’t want to put it behind a paywall (although I do put together liner notes for my supporters on Patreon that go into more character- and chapter specific detail).
These notes are the result of my hobbyist “research” (=looking things up on the internet), and like any other person, I can and probably have made mistakes. I tried not to, but please take everything with a grain of salt and treat it as what it is: background info on the comic, NOT reliable cultural or linguistic studies.
The cultures in Song of the Stars are based on: Malayali (India/Kerala), Yoruba (Benin and Nigeria), (mostly Tang dynasty) Han China and Kanienʼkehá:ka/Mohawk (Eastern woodlands America), all with a dash of yolo. The order in which I put them in this document is arbitrary.
Please note that none of these cultures are supposed to be 1:1 faithful reproductions, it’s still more fantasy than anything else.
In Tolkien logic, you could think of languages this way: in universe, the characters would speak fantasy languages, but they’ve been translated to modern English for convenience, and names into modern Mandarin, Malayalam, Kanienʼkéha and Yoruba. Mandarin is this world’s lingua franca, but realistically you’d hear all of them spoken at one point or the other.
Most of the things I talk about in the cultural notes aren’t immediately relevant or obvious in the comic, but they will give you context at some point or the other down the line, so think of these notes as a running commentary that you can come back to later in the story. They are not required upfront reading (and probably more confusing than helpful if you do that). They are there for purely educational purposes.
That’s it for the general disclaimer! Yes, I know the cultural notes on Han Chinese and especially on Kanienʼkehá:ka are very long, but Malayali and Yoruba are brief and very doable. I put in some memes to keep your attention up. Please appreciate my efforts
If anybody has corrections, additional resources or images to share, or has caught a link that has since expired and can be bothered to send me a friendly (!!) email, you’re welcome to do so: wenzel.franziska@web.de
I’d be happy to include your feedback and I will edit and update my cultural notes accordingly.
Han China
Pronunciation
I went with standardised Mandarin for naming my characters although Cantonese is presumably closer to “ancient” Chinese; don’t think about it too deeply, it’s the just default.
Fun fact! My consultant Zhui Ning gave me a quick rundown on how to pronounce most characters’ names in Song of the Stars; but since you guys weren’t with us on Zoom to witness that, I’ll point you to help for the most difficult sounds for learners of Mandarin. Note that the language has a whole lot of speakers and different regional accents; however I’m carefully optimistic that all of them agree on some common ground.
Please check out this cool video by Grace Guo on consonants that don’t quite exist in English, including the bane of my existence, r sounds.
Part two, including the other bane of my existence, the x in Mandarin.
The x is somewhere between a sharp s and a sh sound (like a tsh?). It actually took me several tries (and asking Zhui Ning for help) to hear the difference between a sh and the x in Mandarin. These are the videos they pointed me to, so in case you still have trouble with it after the video above, try these ones as well.
On vowels: I’ve heard recommendations not to bother with tones because chances are you WILL fuck it up in an English sentence but all the power to you if you can do it. Otherwise, vowel sounds are a bit surprising in places but as usual at least more regular than English (heck, anything’s more regular than English).
I do not usually defend Google Translate because it is utter trash as an actual translation tool; however, the option to read out a word is incredibly useful. Just putting that out there.
So please just try that if you want to hear the characters’ names pronounced semi-correctly. Here’s an alphabetical list of names in the comic for your fun and amusement and completely without context so you can copypaste them into Google Translate:
Ai Yong: 蔼勇
Feng Bai: 風白
Feng Wenyi: 風文怡
Gu He: 古河
Huang Kong: 煌空
Huang Xing: 煌星
Huang Yanhui: 煌彦慧
Huang Yansheng: 煌彦声
Lingwen Jiang: 铃雯江
Shanhu: 珊瑚
Xiu Yeying: 秀夜鶯
Xiu Zhihao: 秀智豪
Zhenzhu: 珍珠
Zhou Le: 周乐
If you want to listen to some more random Mandarin and get a feel for the pronunciation rules, I recommend some Ying breaking down character names in Genshin Impact. They also explain tones.
Naming
Zhui Ning also gave me a quick rundown how Chinese naming works:Zhui Ning also gave me a quick rundown how Chinese naming works:
your parents pick a name that reflects qualities they want you to have
most characters are gender neutral but some have more masculine/feminine connotations than others, especially if used in combination
you don’t usually use more than three characters in a name (usually only one for the family name although two-character family names happen)
commoners would have humbler names than nobility (as in you pick “humble” meanings like hardworking, loyal or something, while a noble might name their child something that reflects power, wealth etc)
you make your child’s name as unique as you can and especially don’t name them after other family members or super famous people like politicians etc
The names I chose are ultimately my ideas, although I had some help from Chinese diaspora friends and from Zhui Ning, so you can blame me for any embarrassing choices I’ve made. As with all names in the comic, I initially gave everyone keysmash names instead of actual Chinese names because I thought it would be more “fantasy”, but since Zhui Ning advised against it, you’re now getting real-ish names for everyone. That said, I chose some pretty cheesy and glaringly telling names that might as well be from a JRPG because the whole comic is basically a JRPG. It made sense in my head. I do expect them to sound pretty jarring in a modern setting, though…
It’s pretty much what Ying is talking about in this video (in case the timestamps don’t work: 12:40). The names “work”, but nobody in their right mind would give them to their real children.
If you want a white people-equivalent, I’d say it’s like how we can accept “Snow White” as a fairytale character’s name just fine, but we’d consider it silly if anybody named their real child like this.
Honorifics
I’ve compiled a brief list of honorifics used in the comic. If I made a bad choice anywhere, it’s entirely my fault and neither Zhui Ning’s nor my friends’, again, although I do hope they make sense within the story.
A more comprehensive list (with audio samples!) for anyone curious is also here.
dì dì=little brother
mèi mei=little sister . While their primary use is among actual siblings, in Chinese culture you can actually also use them to refer to your friends or even lovers and no that’s not incest you buffoons, it’s just a cultural quirk. The same applies to other family terms, their use is not restricted to actual relatives.
“Older brother” would be gē ge, “older sister” is jiě jie. Additionally, these honorifics can be combined with personal names.
fù qīn=father (pretty neutral)
shūshu=(paternal) uncle.
jiùjiu=(maternal) uncle.
nǚ’ér=daughter. You can also call your (little) kid affectionately Xiao-[insert second character of personal name here] or [insert second character of personal name here]-er.
You can use all this knowledge for evil.
Fashion
Chinese fashion is pretty much my favourite of all time and places. No matter what time period and which ethnic group you look at, China has constantly been producing fashion bangers. TBH the main reason why I knew there had to be a fantasy counterpart culture to Han Chinese is because I want to draw characters in hanfu, ergo Han Chinese people (or the fantasy equivalent thereof) had to exist.
(it is also easier to research than other things I dug into for this comic)
Let’s do a quick overview of my creative liberties with Chinese designs for everyone who’s not into danmei and therefore doesn’t know this already:
To avoid the whole “interchangeable Asian cultures” issue, Zhui Ning suggested I should rather mix different time periods as long as I stick to Han Chinese fashion if I want some variety in my designs, rather than mixing in other Asian cultures as I had initially played around with. Which makes sense, so it’s the road I took in the end. I didn’t want to repeat the Raya disaster, for obvious reasons. I started off with “let’s go for Tang because everybody loves Tang”, but there’s also a bit of Song, Han and Shang dynasty in there, as far as reconstructions of it exist, anyway.
Examples: a couple of Song dynasty men’s hanfu, put together by peekofhistory on tumblr
A reconstruction of a woman’s Tang dynasty hanfu (if you see hanfu tied above the chest, that’s unique to the Sui and Tang dynasties!)
If you somehow happen to know nothing about hanfu, this article is very informative and has lots of photos and reconstructions, very well suited for educational purposes! (if your browser doesn’t display it properly, please try a different one, it’s worth the effort, I promise)
If you want something that’s easier to download and keep safe for eternity, here is a rundown of the most important fashion trends (only focusing on the skirts mostly and ignoring makeup and hairdos and jewellery).
There is also a neat flowchart by Nuwahanfu (a hanfu shop!); as usual, only for women’s clothing, but it’s very detailed.
In general, tumblr unfortunately still remains the best place to find dedicated fashion blogs; check this one out, too.
If you prefer videos, this Youtube channel has some short and sweet videos that explain some popular women’s hanfu styles over the centuries and how to wear them!
Books on Chinese fashion history exist but I’m not aware of any translations, so since I wouldn’t be able to read them, anyway, I don’t own any and can’t give you book recs. Sorry.
For my comic, I repeatedly steal jewellery shapes from ancient artifacts:
Incidentally, I’ve seen reconstructions of Shang dynasty fashion that actually do use those shapes for embroidery and jewellery.
In combination with the headbands and loopy earrings, those reconstructions look a bit like Ainu fashion. It looks incredibly cool but I don’t actually know how much of that is wildly guessed conjecture (the woman’s makeup does look loudly modern) and how much it is actually based on whatever sparse archaeological evidence might be left from so long ago. (probably no actual direct relation to Ainu culture. Probably.)
Another fun fact for those not aware: although earrings apparently were ubiquitous during the Shang dynasty, silver hair/head/ear ornaments aren’t a thing in later Han Chinese culture and earrings in general weren’t worn again until the Song dynasty. And yet you may see them in modern hanfu fashion and cdramas even though those are often set at various points between Han and late Tang. Those are inspired by Hmong jewellery. Sometimes characters actually explicitly or implicitly are Hmong, but more often than not styles just get mixed. Anyway, tumblr post.
(the blog calls the Hmong Miao, but from what I’ve gathered, Hmong is the better term)In case you didn’t know, low necklines/showing off cleavage was perfectly fashionable and acceptable in Tang China! You don’t see it on the streets in hanfu revival fashion because those ruquns are adjusted to fit modern tastes. Less slutty than ankles
Tang dynasty was the sluttiest, that’s just a fact. This is my excuse for pulling several of the necklines so low you’d think the ladies walked straight off the red carpet in Hollywood. Either way, see my favourite hanfu blog on cleavage as usual!
I took some hints what to get away with in a fantasy setting from dunhuang style hanfu as well (only very loosely historically based Chinese depictions of Hindu and Buddhist deities); bonus points because it mixes a bit better with Indian sari than regular ruqun silhouettes do. Again, check out an introduction on my favourite tumblr blog.
Artistic rendition by one of my absolute favourite artists; you can find them on bluesky under the handle huyizzz. If anyone ever sees them release an art book, please let me know and give me the taobao link. My wallet is yours
I did the bare minimum and listened to Zhui Ning when they suggested putting (most) characters’ hair in historical updos (no, the high ponytails that you all love so much for whatever reason aren’t historical). I almost completely ignored makeup, but historically it seems to have been ubiquitous.
ANYWHO; you can’t improve perfection, but I tried my best to make hanfu fashion my semi-own.
Well, phew. That was a lot. Before you read on:
Song of the Stars is a fantasy comic written by a white European, not a xianxia or xuanhuan. You’ll find that any similarities are skin-deep and most themes like “gods live in the sky” are a global mythology staple. If you’re here to read xianxia, please just read actual xianxia written by actual Chinese people. However, if you’re here for fantasy inspired by Chinese and other mythology, we do have that.
Malayali
Naming and pronunciation
Naming the fantasy-Indian characters was… at least not as hard as it was naming everyone else. My consultant Georgina’s rule of thumb was basically: pick a name you like (yes, I used behindthename dot com) and then enter the name you picked into Google or on Facebook and see if you get results; if yes then you know it’s a valid name and somebody would name their child like that. Upper class people would most likely have a surname. I’ve only cheated with Abhay, whose first name is real, but their last name, Kelasa, is not.
The real world equivalent to the rainforest is Kerala in South India, where most people speak Malayalam, not Hindi. I’ve found pronunciation a bit peculiar but not too surprising, so I’m gonna do the same thing that I did with the Mandarin names, give you the names of my characters in the comic written in Malayalam and let you listen to the Google translate voice read them out for you. Again, no I’m not joking, it’s trash as a translation tool but pretty useful for pronunciation. Notice also that many names are common across India and Indian diaspora in one form or another, although the scripts used are different.
Anup: അനൂപ്
Asha: ആശാ
Kalyani Karthika: കല്യാണി കാർത്തിക
Lalitha: ലളിത
Nalini Karthika: നളിനി കാർത്തിക
Shanthi: ശാന്തി
Vinay: വിനയ്
I actually gave the people from the Rainbow Isles Sanskrit names, not Malayalam to distinguish them; sadly, Google Translate does not have a readout function for Sanskrit, but you can try setting Google to Hindi instead and hope it’s sorta close. My awkward transcriptions on the character list are based on this.
Abhay: अभय
(I tried to find the devanagari spelling for their last name but am not confident in what I found, so I’ll leave it out for now.)
Lavanya Jyotsna: लावण्या ज्योत्स्ना
Purnima Varsha: पूर्णिमा वर्षा
Design
Fashion in this comic is broadly inspired by medieval South Indian fashion, but details from other periods and parts of India may creep in, as well as other elements that are purely fantastic. This is by design. That said, if you’d like to delve into actual Indian fashion history more (which is great!), here is a nice starting point with sources. Particularly this one.
I decided to use them sparingly and in this comic and only for exactly that purpose: young women reaching adulthood.
As the rainforest is based on Kerala specifically, I also looked up Kerala style sari and dhoti specifically; Kerala sari have a very specific draping style that you can check out in this video, for example.
I mixed this Kerala draping style with a bit of yolo and the more widely used over the shoulder draping style in the ladies’ sari designs for variety. Kerala sari also tend to be traditionally white with gold trimming, so I tried to use that colour combination quite often. Styles of Sari by M. V. Dhurandhar:
I put bandanas and blouses (a late-ish development in Indian fashion) on the girls because I doubt the internet will let me get away with “female presenting nipples” on main
Artistic depictions of Kerala sari: Malayale Lady, Lady with Veena and There Comes Papa by Raja Ravi Varma.
Architecture whenever shown in the comic is based off Malayali and Tamil architecture.
Kanienʼkehá:ka
Useless Foreword: we are here
Disclaimer for those not aware: all nations of the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois federation (Seneca/Cayuga/Onondaga/Oneida/Mohawk/Tuscarora) are very close culturally and linguistically, so when I talk about culture stuff, it usually applies to all six member nations, but the language stuff about to follow is specifically about the Mohawk language. There is also a lot of overlap with other neighbouring cultures concerning fashion, and a lot of overlap concerning religion and mythology with other Iroquois speaking peoples who were NOT part of the Haudenosaunee confederation (Huron/Wyandot and Cherokee), so if you end up doing research of your own, don’t be surprised if some topics more broadly apply to several nations. Still, that doesn’t mean they’re interchangeable.
Still with me? Okay let’s go
FIRST I’M GONNA TEACH YOU HOW TO PRONOUNCE KANIEN’KÉHA (“gan-ye-GE-ha”)
Google Translate doesn’t have this one at all, so allow me to be your substitute teacher. My beta reader and consultant, Lune, also only speaks the language a bit, so please be kind with your insults, we tried! It should still be more educational than nothing.
Pronunciation
There are three dialects, so take some spelling, pronunciation and vocabulary that you come across with a grain of salt. I’ve also seen some (antiquated?) alternative spelling systems but pretty much all material on the modern, very much still alive language agrees on other baselines, and those will be the ones we’ll go with. Just don’t be surprised if you read historical documents and the transcriptions of Kanien’kéha words and names are way off.There are three dialects, so take some spelling, pronunciation and vocabulary that you come across with a grain of salt. I’ve also seen some (antiquated?) alternative spelling systems but pretty much all material on the modern, very much still alive language agrees on other baselines, and those will be the ones we’ll go with. Just don’t be surprised if you read historical documents and the transcriptions of Kanien’kéha words and names are way off.
The most obvious distinction (though not the only one) between the modern dialects is whether you spell words with a y or with an i; so you will sometimes find Kanien’kéha spelled Kanyen’kéha instead, and sometimes without the diacritics except apostrophes, so you get Kanyen’keha. In my comic, I’m going with the variant that always uses an i and doesn’t use the letter y whatsoever simply because it’s the first dialect variant that I came across (both because that variant is used in AC3 and because it’s the spelling from an online dictionary I’ll link to you later; from what I’ve gathered this is the Quebecois way of doing it), so when I started looking for funny words to name my fictional characters after, they all happened to be this dialect variant. I am also going for spellings with all diacritics because I personally think they make it easier to get behind the language for a foreigner. Honestly the diacritics are there to help you
So here’s how it goes: apostrophes stand for a glottal stop, the kolon lengthens the preceding vowel, acute and grave accents indicate intonation.
Kanienʼkéha is a tonal language (as are like half of all North American languages, but that’s by the by); acute means you raise your voice, grave means it goes down.
The vowel sounds are closer to German use of the Latin letters than English and very regular. An n after e and o is only hinted at rather than pronounced clearly and instead denotes that the vowel is nasalised. So “on” sounds more like “oon” and “en” like… French. It’s a bit more like an “a” than an “e”. Just listen to it.
You aspirate consonants in most contexts. That’s what makes the language sound so soft. It consists almost entirely of voiced sounds.
You only pronounce consonants as voiceless when a h follows (so k is actually pronounced g, but kh=k!). Thus, wh gives a soft f sound, th isn’t the English sound but a t.
Placed in front of a vowel, “ti” is pronounced j (like in “jungle”), “thi” is “tsh” (like the ch in “change”) or “tj”; similarly, shi before another vowel is “sj” or “shj” depending on whom you ask.
Caveat: not in all dialects/not all speakers do this. I’ve heard “ti” pronounced “di” just as many times.
“r” is like a mixture of r and l (leaning more towards one or the other depending on the individual speaker).
In theory, you pronounce the h after a vowel; like you do in Old English! However, in practice in most audio samples I’ve listened to it’s either very light or pretty much silent, so don’t overthink it. Just don’t be surprised if a speaker does pronounce it very prominently.
If all of that looks like a lot and scary and confusing to you, I assure you it could have been worse. Salish languages in Latin transcription look like your cat walked across the keyboard. No shade here, Pacific Northwest culture is incredibly interesting.
Either way, PLEASE GIVE IT A TRY. DO IT FOR ME. DON’T BE ACHILLES DAVENPORT.
At the end of this section is a collection of resources to check out. I’ve included several video links in there where you can listen to native speakers, so please do that! Substitute teacher out
I didn’t coach you through all this pronunciation stuff for fun (well, maybe I did), the characters’ names in the comic are actual real Kanienʼkéha. However, the names aren’t real names. They’re nicknames (and btw all of them translate to animals and plants, which was Lune’s idea and I jumped on it). Reasoning behind this, in case you’re not aware, is that some people are very protective of their Mohawk names (which are unique btw – you don’t name your kid after other people) and it’s pretty rude to use them without permission. Yes, even if it’s for a work of fiction. Ubisoft did something right for once and kindly asked their consultants to give Connor a unique name that they may use in AC3. Actress Kaniehtiio Horn allegedly shrugged it off and allowed the developers to use her name, as did Kanentó:kon Hemlock, but I couldn’t exactly do it like that in my comic.
The solution I went for was Lune’s idea, as mentioned above. I really liked it because that way we can still use the language without me having to learn a whole new language and also having to check in with people if the names I would come up with are actually available (which would have been a logistic nightmare and I sincerely doubt I would have succeeded). I also really like the idea that this fantasy culture has unique naming conventions. Win/win
Did I still dig into some Kanienʼkéha morphology and vocabulary for funsies? Yeah
By which I mean no I don’t speak a single word of the language, but I can tell you some very fun things about it. Also I can randomly identify some words when playing AC3 now
The Haudenosaunee confederacy was a functional democracy possibly way before anyone else on this planet was, in the sense that they were miles more inclusive about it than “only wealthy male individuals may vote” fucking Athens even if Athens happened centuries before. I just think that’s pretty neat.
If you’re curious about how the political system works, I found that pretty neatly explained in this video.
“Okay so how much do real Haudenosaunee and fictional fantasy society actually have in common?”
Short answer: *vague hand gesture*Long answer: For the sake of simplicity, I’d say social structure is analogous until proven otherwise. I think that’s neat because that makes the mountain people society the only one in the comic that’s matrilinear and democratic. It’s fun having an outlier. Fun fact: since I knew the political system would never come up in the comic and therefore not matter, I initially meant to come up with something entirely fictional and much simpler. However, Lune asked me if I could model it more closely to actual Haudenosaunee political structure and honestly I don’t see a reason why not. So here we are. The obvious differences are:
Names, see above as for why I changed that system
Clan names. The actual Haudenosaunee clans are named after animals, but I actually have no clue what mountain people clans are named after. Feel free to imagine whatever
Religion. This is a JRPG
Costume design and related matters
Material culture analogues between mountain people and pre-colonial Haudenosaunee would maybe be a 50/50? Since the people of the mountains don’t live in upstate New York, and in fact not on earth, and have very different (distant) neighbours to trade goods with, they’d have much worse conditions for farming, but on the plus side be spoilt for choice for trade goods. There is a lot less leather and copper, although still present.
Any attempts to reconstruct strictly pre-European contact clothing are scarce and frustrating; contemporary portraits depicting the fashion during the Beaver Wars and American revolution do exist but those are, well, not pre-European contact.
Addendum on the dancer outfit: masks for religious purposes are attested, however I didn’t want to open that can of worms for the comic. Lune specifically warned me to please never include masks, so I won’t. Please don’t put masks on anyone in fanart or cosplay either (disclaimer: as I’ve already told Lune, my reach and audience are tiny and I don’t expect to see any fanart or cosplay ever, but for the record: don’t do this, anyway).
Photos exist, but obviously not pre-contact, either.
All of that is fine and dandy, but obviously the result of Indigenous adaptations of European fashion. Europe does not even exist in my comic. This comic has fantasy China, South India and West Africa instead. I took that as an excuse to try and extricate the distinctly Indigenous elements of post-contact Iroquois clothing and jewellery and mix that with clothing cuts and fabrics actually found in my fantasy world instead. The result is ironically enough my own soup.
If you’d like to see a better guess at what real pre-Colonial Haudenosaunee fashion probably looked like, here’s a neat video overview. Unlike what the atrocious AC3 DLC implies, winter clothes did exist (for the record I’m not complaining about Connor being perpetually shirtless. I am however complaining about everything else)
If you have time on your hands, Malcolm P.L. also made a comprehensive video about a museum display he curated here. It’s very neat.
Wooden jewellery isn’t a thing in any culture I know of. I always wondered why because carving is a lovely craft, so I gave it to the people who live in a place with lots of wood. That said, people in the real Northeastern woodlands actually used seashells, porcupine quills, horn or bone and copper, so what’s obviously not wood in the comic will be one of these. Not that you could tell from my anime-esque art style.
As with all things in this comic, I didn’t think too hard about colours because this is fantasy and if I say a dye of that colour exists, then it does. Doesn’t take a lot to suspend any disbelief here.
Same with the tattoos. If I say indigo ink is a thing, then it is now. The style and ubiquity of mountain people tattoos is a creative liberty; apparently there’s only evidence for medicinal and martial tattoos in Haudenosaunee society, but nobody goes to war here so that’s boring. Don’t interpret too much into it.
I repeat and stress this, the style and patterns I use are not historical. What if I want them to look a bit more like Northwest coast patterns which look a lot like Ainu patterns which look a bit like Shang dynasty patterns
I’m not going anywhere with this I just think it’s coolMy concept of having standardised designs for different jobs or occasions is indeed inspired by the general idea that you don’t just get tattoos for aesthetic purposes, you get them to mark important events in your life; however, I obviously took that general idea and ran with it. Not quite as hard as, say, Maori culture ran with it, but I codified it more than your average pre-colonial Native American would do. Lune also did warn me that you wouldn’t really get tattoos for other reasons than those important (positive!) moments in your life, so I refrained from adding tattoos for other purposes (I had initially considered events of mourning or punishment for crimes as well, but it turned out that’s just not how pre-colonial America worked)
Sidecuts were a general thing thing in several Native American cultures but not the way you think and it’s kind of hard to find out who started it and when (yes, the Mohawk hairstyle is known as such nowadays but it most likely wasn’t actually a Mohawk invention. It’s also not actually attested historically. Also technically people didn’t shave their hair, they ripped out. Either way, it was just a fashion thing, you weren’t forced to shave your head or anything; that’s my excuse why Skentasheskó:wa lowkey wears Skrillex style instead.
Still, I always raise an eyebrow whenever I see vikings in “historical” shows shave the sides of their heads but then the Natives don’t. This is a thinly veiled subtweet
Further reading
Language
Lune pointed me to a dictionary that I actually used; unfortunately it’s since been offline. I’ve also seen one and the same word sometimes spelled differently (usually if/where the diacritics and h’s go) on different websites. I can’t tell if one website sometimes got it wrong or it’s simply a dialect thing (see above), but for the record, this is the site where I got my spellings from. Oh and sometimes I see completely different words for things/animals on different sites. Same issue there.
However, the creators’ patreon is still up and running: Mohawk Dictionary | creating Endangered Language Initiative | Patreon.
There’s also this site, which is a bit prone to obvious errors like links sometimes leading to the wrong audio files, but the dialogue section does have audio files, which is much appreciated.
I do happen to have a copy of Kanyen’keha Tewatati, which, despite the title, has mostly morphology but little syntax and ready to use phrases, so I’d call actually learning to speak with it a tough task… (it’s neat to have all those morphology rules in one place, though)
This video is very good to get the subtleties of intonation (and the examples are hilarious)
This playlist gives you videos about bits of everything; it explains the pronunciation rules, it gives you some vocabulary and some phrases. And lots of possessives
Fun activities if all of that was too educational for you: play Assassin’s Creed III or watch Marvel’s What If, season 2, episode 6, to get a taste for the language. Well maybe not too much fun, Marvel is stupid. But AC3 is actually one of my favourite games, despite its massive shortcomings.
Just don’t listen to Noah too much; I adore Noah and intend no shade on him but he’s Crow and his Mohawk pronunciation is a bit all over the place
Other resources
There’s a free online class from the University of Alberta that I actually took, if you would like to get an introduction to contemporary Indigenous (in general, not just Kanienʼkehá:ka) issues in Canada. You only need to register.
I mentioned Malcolm P.L.’s videos before and I’m just gonna recommend his entire channel. You can thank me later.
If you’d like a cooler and more comprehensive map of indigenous cultures in the Americas with -100% fewer pop culture references than my crude edit, please check out https://native-land.ca/.
While a lot of knowledge about religion and mythology has been lost due to colonisation and/or Indigenous people are reluctant to share for the same reason, it’s deeply fascinating. If you’re interested in folklore and mythology, I quite enjoyed this book: Wonderley, Anthony. Oneida Iroquois Folklore, Myth, and History. New York Oral Narrative from the Notes of H. E. Allen and Others. Syracuse University Press, 2024.
As the name implies it’s focused on Oneida material, but repeatedly makes a point of how much cultural overlap there is between Iroquois speaking people, not just the members of the confederacy but also Huron/Wyandot and Cherokee.
Not-fun topic and relevant for all Indigenous peoples in North America but still an important parting note: if you haven’t done so already, please look up residential schools, forced adoptions and the Sixties Scoop and MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women). A starting point. There are now movies about these things, too etc.
Yoruba
Pronunciation
Sadly, while Google Translate does have a Yoruba dictionary, it does not have voice samples, and thus I can’t give you a character list with pronunciations. However, you can find some people on Youtube showcasing how pronunciation works; as usual, it’s a lot more regular than English. A rundown of the alphabet
The channel has more videos on the language!
In general, keep in mind that the vowels in English are pretty peculiar and in most languages, they aren’t read the way they are read in English. It’s “O-mo-reh-mee”. Not “O-mo-ree-my”.
Costume design
The little sea shells you see on the outfits in the comic are an actual West African thing! Historically from what I understand they would showcase wealth and prestige, so you more decked out in seashells you are, the richer you probably are. I use them like that in the comic, too. However, they are also still used in religious contexts.
My consultant Richard pointed me towards popular contemporary cuts for dresses, robes and headwear; as with all things in the comic, I took some creative liberties with those to cook my own soup. I am cheating with dyes as usual. If I say black dye exists, then it does.
The headscarves that women tend to wear are popular in some form or the other in other West African ethnic groups as well.
Thankfully, Yoruba fashion actually does have some fashionable asymmetry going on, so I can claim it goes nicely with their sari-wearing neighbours.
If you’d like to have a look at some contemporary Yoruba fashion, here is a lecture with an overview.
Yoruba people have a long history of metal working, so you’ll occasionally see heavy metal jewellery (haha) in the comic.
I did watch this arte documentary about the medievial Yoruba city Ilé-Ifè. If the link doesn’t work, it’s on Youtube, however apparently only in German without subtitles? It might vary depending on the country you’re in and whether or not you use a VPN. Arte documentaries tend to be uneven in quality and newer ones have embraced AI graphics, so be a bit wary of them, but there’s some good info in there as well, and we gotta take what we can get.